Crookall under fire for school catering move

Tynwald buildings, Douglas

Adrian Darbyshire

There ‘wasn’t time or inclination’ to consult over the decision to take control away from schools for catering, caretaking and maintenance, the Education Minister told MHKs.

Tim Crookall came under fire in the House of Keys over a government policy to save £4m a year by bringing staff and budgets together in shared services, with catering centralised within the new Department of Health and Social Care from April 1, and caretaking joining maintenance in the Department of Infrastructure.

Replying to a question from Michael MHK Alfred Cannan, Mr Crookall said: ‘Given that the decision affected significant numbers of employees it was not possible to consult with head teachers prior to those employees being informed.’

He said there wasn’t the time or the inclination to consult fully as it was ‘something that had been decided’. ‘Yes, it could have been handled better,’ he said.

The Minister said senior officers from his department had met with all primary and secondary head teachers on Monday January 20 – two days before the policy was confirmed in Tynwald – to discuss the move to shared services in caretaking, catering and cleaning.

But Brenda Cannell (Douglas East) said the change in policy had been presented as a fait accompli. ‘That’s hardly proper consultation,’ she said.

Mr Cannan said the majority of head teachers supported the principle of devolved management and its removal undermined their ability to spend locally, which could result in imported food being served in school canteens. ‘Isn’t it the responsibility of government to focus on building the community of our island?’ he asked.

In a written reply to a question from Mr Cannan on the same issue, Treasury Minister Eddie Teare said the health department’s catering budget for 2013/14 will be £1.6m net. The catering balance to be transferred in to the Department of Health and Social Care is a net amount of £0.9m (based on total gross expenditure of £4.8m and gross income of £3.9m). The number of catering staff will increase from 45.57 full time equivalents to 166.25 after the transfer.

Mr Teare said target savings of £200,000 (7.8 per cent of net spending) have been applied to the total in 2014-15.

In a written reply to a Tynwald question last month, Chief Minister Allan Bell said some island secondary schools have stopped using Manx bread. He said there was no government policy requiring departments to use Manx produce. The prison, too, has stopped using Manx bread as have some care homes.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Isle of Man Today provides news, events and sport features from the Isle of Man area. For the best up to date information relating to Isle of Man and the surrounding areas visit us at Isle of Man Today regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Isle of Man Today requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.